cancer research

“Seventy-five percent of all lung cancers are found too late,” actress and cancer survivor Valerie Harper told a Senate committee hearing on cancer on Wednesday, saying funding is desperately needed for early detection in “people like me” who didn’t think they were at risk. The hearing by the Senate Special Committee on Aging focused on federal funding for cancer research and the challenges facing aging survivors. Harold Varmus, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute, who also testified, noted that …

Breast cancer activist Barbara Brenner, who died on May 10 at age 61 in San Francisco, refused to wear a pink ribbon. As she told a newspaper interviewer back in 1996, she already wore a symbol of her concern about the disease: a horizontal scar across her chest. But more important, she was offended by what she saw as an empty feel-good gesture. “They’re trying to turn breast cancer into a safe thing,” she railed. “Just get a wig and get …

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month – as if you couldn’t tell by all the pink-ribbon logos on products, 60-year-old Liam Neeson in hot-pink underwear, and football players, young and old, wearing pink football gear. Even the White House has turned pink. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women and the fifth leading cause of death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which urges older women to get their mammograms. Breast cancer has …